


Penumbra

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Blindfolds, Communication, Established Relationship, F/M, No Plot/Plotless, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-03-29 20:30:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19027372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "And, of course, for Shinra the dark has always been linked with that one existence he most desires in his own life." Shinra finds more to love than to fear in the shadows.





	Penumbra

Shinra loves the dark.

He has for as long as he can remember. Memory goes hazy in the early years of his life, when his existence was more in the moment than something to be recollected in the future, but no matter how he reaches he can’t recall ever feeling the cringing fear of the unknown that his classmates sometimes expressed. Uncertainty is a draw more than something to be feared, shadows ripe with possibility instead of teeming with danger; and, of course, for Shinra the dark has always been linked with that one existence he most desires to have in his own life.

“Celty,” he sighs, breathing appreciation into the absolute black that has pressed itself around him to strip away the unnecessary distraction of vision. When Shinra lifts his hands into the unseen space around him he imagines he can feel the weight of air gone heavy against his skin, trickling like water through his outstretched hands and clinging fog-cool to his bare arms. “You are  _ so _ beautiful.”

There’s a tremor that runs through the darkness around him. Shinra can feel it against his skin, like a curl of wind wandering across his body, like sound compressed down into a vibration for his skin more than his ears. There aren’t words to it, of course, any more than Celty ever offers the mundanity of human speech, but the meaning is carried as clearly as if she is speaking directly against his ear, as if her thoughts are carried directly to his mind without the inconvenient middle step of shaping them to the limitations of language.

Shinra laughs. “Of course I can tell,” he says. “I don’t need to rely on something like vision to know how lovely you are. Even if you were on the other side of the world from me, I would feel your beauty in the core of my soul.” The shadows around him shift again, tightening as if fingers curling towards a fist for a moment, and Shinra smiles into the darkness again. “I’m not going to stop thinking it just because I’m not saying it out loud.” Movement caresses the back of his neck, cool smoke condensing into gentle persuasion, and Shinra shudders with the friction and huffs surrender.

“Alright,” he says, and lifts his head to turn his face up as if to look out into the absolute blackness that has swallowed him into it. He lifts his arms, reaching out into the void to make a request of his position without the need for words. “Come here and I’ll be quiet for you.”

The smoke slides around him, the fog of darkness stroking across his skin as it shifts. Shinra can feel the pull of it over his shoulders, across his legs, winding through his hair; he wonders if he is wearing the smooth black of Celty’s shadows as Celty herself does, if his appearance would be indistinguishable from hers to someone who happened to come through the bedroom door and see him wound in the clinging weight of shadow given intent. The thought is heat in his veins, pleasure enough to glow beneath his skin with arousal, buying it a permanent place in his imagination for future use, but in the moment the darkness is shifting into the weight of another person sitting atop his legs, and Shinra doesn’t need to rely on any imagination at all to appreciate that.

Shinra smiles. “Celty,” he sighs, and draws his arms in without hesitation. There’s still that dark smoke hanging around him, he can feel it slipping over his skin as he moves, but when his hands reach they find smooth skin, his palms fitting to the shape of bare shoulders as easily as his hold pulls the form on his lap in against him. His vision is still absorbed by darkness, still filled with the shadows that are as much Celty as the more human form she is taking against him, but Shinra still shuts his eyes for the first moment of pressing Celty to him so he can shut away the distraction of that all-encompassing darkness to focus for a moment on the physical presence of the woman in his arms. His arm presses against Celty’s shoulder to hold them together, his hand fits to the elegant curve of Celty’s back, and Shinra follows down the length of it, counting the perfect line of vertebrae against his fingertips as Celty’s arms wind around his neck and her legs shift against his. A bare foot presses to his calf, the contact delicate as if with uncertainty, and Shinra smiles and ducks his head down over the line of Celty’s shoulder in front of him.

“Not at all,” he says. “Kissing is just a means to express affection, and we have plenty of other ways to do that as well.” His fingers slide over the indent of Celty’s back and drop down towards her hips, inching over the edge of decency as they go. “And that doesn’t stop me from kissing other parts of you. If you wanted me to I could get on my knees right now and--” His tongue stalls its motion, his speech cut off to unintelligibility by the spill of cool smoke that rushes in to fill his mouth like water, and Shinra laughs in the back of his throat without trying to pull free of Celty’s restriction. The weight lingers for a moment, the delay carrying as much judgment as a frown would from someone else, before the shadows draw back and give Shinra use of his mouth again.

Shinra presses his lips together, choosing silent appreciation for a moment. He can taste the cool of Celty’s shadows on his tongue, imagines he can hold some of the darkness that forms her existence behind his lips by pressing them tightly enough together, but he knows Celty, and any word to that effect will surely result in a puff of embarrassment and a retreat to more distant ground. He doesn’t mind the embarrassment -- there are few things he can imagine more charming than the fog of Celty’s self-consciousness -- but he ever wishes for as little distance as he can win for himself, and the present moment is too entirely perfect for him to risk it. So he stays quiet and keeps his thoughts within the silence of his head, and when he moves it’s to tighten his hold around Celty’s shoulders to draw into the encouragement of an embrace instead of resuming the appreciative speech he was offering before.

Celty is immediately responsive. It’s not just the hold of her arms around Shinra’s neck that tighten to draw them closer together, or the shift of her knees pressing against his leg; Shinra can feel the cool of shadows winding around him, wrapping against his body like dozens of hands reaching to hold him closer against Celty’s physical form. Shinra turns his head to the side to pillow his head at Celty’s shoulder, and smiles into the dark of his still-shut eyes, and when his hand slides down the curve of Celty’s back and around to press against her thigh there’s no curl of smoke to lock his wrist in place or force his motion to a halt. The only response he gets is the push of fingers sliding up into his hair, and the flex of Celty’s thighs shivering with the friction where she’s sitting atop his lap, and Shinra can understand the encouragement of that with perfect clarity. He braces his palm flat against Celty’s shoulder, and the other hand close under the curve of her thigh, and when he leans back to draw them down to the sheets of the bed he does so in full certainty that the web of smoke filling the room will catch and ease the joint weight of their bodies.

The sheets are soft under Shinra’s shoulders. There’s something of a loss to lying back; it’s easier to imagine himself adrift in the endless, eternal void of Celty’s existence when he’s sitting up, or better yet when he’s on his feet with nothing but the distant pull of gravity to ground him to the more mundane aspects of reality. But Celty is moving as Shinra falls, her embodied form as well as the rippling motion of her shadows, and Shinra can’t really complain about the shift in position when Celty’s weight is shifting to brace her knees against him and press his hips between the soft give of her thighs. Shinra tips his head back against the support of the bed beneath him, opening his eyes to gaze back into the darkness in which Celty’s shadows have wrapped him as he fits one hand to Celty’s hip and trails his other down against the top of her thigh against him. The bed shifts beneath him, the support tilting to the weight of a bracing hand pressing against it, but Shinra is more interested in leaning into the palm that finds its way to his cheek to press close against the line of his jaw.

“Celty,” Shinra says, drawing the syllables into the glowing appreciation that is always so easy to find from the shadows of his tongue. He turns his head to the side, nuzzling closer against Celty’s touch as his lips brush against the delicate skin of her wrist nearly against his jaw. Her body is hot against his, as radiant with heat as if she were the human she appears to be from the neck down; the fact urges some part of his appreciative thoughts in the direction of curiosity and the questions that are nearly as quick to come to his lips as professions of affection. “How is it that you’re so warm? Surely your blood shouldn’t be able to stay hot without a pulse. And your shadows are cool, too; do you lose energy when you dematerialize? How do you find heat enough to reform into your physical body when you want to come back?”

The fingers at Shinra’s skin slide to draw across his face, a palm fits flush against his mouth. After a moment there’s pressure to go with it, force to urge Celty’s hand down atop Shinra’s mouth, and Shinra huffs a laugh through his nose.

“Okay,” he says, his words muffled by Celty’s palm but still clear enough to carry the surrender of his tone if nothing else. “I get it, Celty.” Celty’s fingers draw away from Shinra’s mouth and push up to wind into his hair instead and Shinra smiles in answer, offering the affection of the expression to the shadows around him in full confidence that Celty will be aware of it even if the room is filled with the same velvet darkness that is wound so close around his eyes.

“I like the idea of this better anyway,” Shinra says. His hands are still close against Celty’s hip and thigh; he shifts his thumb to ease the drag of a caress over Celty’s skin. “We can talk about theories and experimental validation any time, right?” Motion ruffles his hair, a dark breeze acting separately from the fingers in his hair, and Celty’s thigh shifts under Shinra’s touch as her leg draws up to brace at the bed. Shinra catches a breath, his chest tightening on anticipation at the feel of Celty moving over him to tip herself forward and shift her hips over his, but he doesn’t brace his hold at her waist or move to pull her down or into position. He lies still instead, reclined on the bed where Celty urged him and ready to be entirely accepting of whatever she sees fit to claim. She could wrap him in bonds of unbreakable shadow, could wander her touch across the whole of his bare skin, could write her voice into the shape of moans in his throat: Shinra is ready for any of it, for all of it, for anything and everything Celty sees fit to grace him with.

It’s not the fog-smooth restraints that slide across Shinra’s body, not the teasing brush of tickling smoke that tightens to a knot of heat at the base of his spine and tenses his legs against the support of the bed beneath him. Celty bears a human form most of the time, chooses to remain in the existence that brings her closest in seeming to Shinra himself, and in the end it’s in that form that she acts. Her body shifts forward, tipping in over Shinra close enough that he imagines he could skim the curves of her form with his fingertips without needing any kind of a glimpse through the shadows enveloping his sight, and when her knees tense at his sides it’s with the same very human uncertainty that she might offer if she were the young woman so much of her appears to be. Shinra’s thighs tense, the heat in his belly tightening with his usual entire appreciation of everything Celty is, right down to the most human parts of her identity, and he’s drawing a breath to speak when Celty tips herself back to urge the heat of her body down against Shinra’s length. Shinra’s voice fails him, pulled away by Celty’s movement to render him as mute as she, and all he is left with is the part of his lips and the flex of his fingers to speak his appreciation as she moves to slide herself back and onto him.

There is a familiarity to the movement. Shinra remembers the first time he persuaded Celty to shed the shadows that wrap her pale skin in exchange for the weight of his hands directly against her body; he had been trembling, then, shaking with such adrenaline he can call up no details beyond flickers of sight, gasps of breathing to fit against sensation as much a product of his own overexcited imagining as anything else. It would always have been too brief, he thinks, even if he had drawn the experience ten times as long as it was in truth; but it was in the breathless aftermath that he had found repetition to be even better than the unbearable intensity of initial contact. Practice has given him the composure to appreciate as much as he desires, and experience has taught Celty the best means of finding her own pleasure from Shinra’s willing body, until now Shinra can let himself shudder with the sensation of his body joining with Celty’s without fear that she may remain unsatisfied. Her pleasure is his own, a fact she believes as well as knows, now, and when she moves to press her knees close to Shinra’s waist Shinra knows it is a means to her own ends, a brace to steady herself as she leans in against the support of her hand over Shinra’s shoulder. Shinra draws a breath, pulling the air into his lungs as deep as he can manage, and when his fingers at Celty’s hip tighten she moves over him as if following his instruction to fit them into the smooth rhythm their bodies ever find together.

Shinra’s eyes are still covered, his vision still shadow-dark; but he doesn’t need to see, doesn’t need any more input than the weight of Celty’s smoke wrapping as close around him as the heat of her body, filling him with every draw of his lungs to match the fit of his body working into her own. Celty’s hand pushes up farther into his hair, ruffling through the strands as she leans in closer, and Shinra lifts his hold from her hip to reach out for the unseen grace of her waist instead and fit his hand to the movement of her body as she rocks over him. His fingers draw over silk-smooth skin, mapping the curve of her ribcage, following the flex of lean muscle across her stomach and over her back, and when his palm catches under the weight of a full breast Shinra can feel the shudder that goes through Celty’s body as clearly as if he’s hearing an audible gasp. He slides his hand up, supporting her against his palm as his fingers press against soft curves and his thumb seeks out the taut point of a nipple, and as he presses his touch to deliberate friction Celty’s shoulders curve, her body arching to bring her in closer to Shinra beneath her. Her other breast urges against his chest, his hand is pinned between them, and when Shinra draws an inhale he imagines he can taste the shadows on his tongue, imagines he can feel the cool of them spreading out to lace through his body with proof of Celty’s effect on him.

“Celty,” Shinra says, and turns his head to follow the spill of smoke that constantly rises from Celty’s neck, that feels humid-hot with the same arousal tight in her thighs at his hips and flushing her breast heavy against his palm. He draws his touch down her thigh, feeling the tension of her movement before he pushes back up to clasp at her hip and steady them together. “I love you so much.” He imagines a cloud of shadow, embarrassment converting itself to heat as quickly as it is felt, and Shinra slides his hand from Celty’s hip and up to brace at the curve of her back and pin them close together. Celty leans in against him, her hand at the sheets sliding in and under to fit under Shinra’s neck and around the support of his shoulders, and when Shinra rocks his hips up to match her rhythm he can feel the tremor of reaction that radiates through her, rippling to sensation as clear to read as a moan. Shinra’s arm tightens, he turns his head to press to Celty’s shoulder, and when Celty’s body draws taut on pleasure against his he’s holding her steady, bracing her as she pulls all the tension in her body into a thrumming point of anticipation. They hang there for a moment, suspended in the inevitability of relief; and then Celty shudders against Shinra, and Shinra’s throat spills an orgasmic moan for them both as the wave of Celty’s pleasure releases his own to course through him as well.

Neither of them move for the first minute. Their bodies are pressed close together, skin so sweat-humid that Shinra feels as if the separation between them might be melting, as if the heat of his existence is radiating into the air to tangle with the smoke of Celty’s presence and blend into a single homogenous existence. The idea is a pleasant one, curving a smile onto his lips even while his breathing is still drawing ragged on the force of pleasure that has worked through him, and it’s while he’s smiling into the darkness around him that Celty shifts against him and presses her hand closer against his hair to steady them as she draws them free of that first overheated embrace before rocking back and away. Shinra blinks into the dark, feeling as if the weight of shadow bearing down on him is easing too; because it is, he realizes a moment later, as Celty lets the band of shadow she wrapped around his eyes disintegrate into a dense fog around him before it begins to dissipate. Shinra’s vision comes back slowly, first as no more than a dull glow of light and then slowly resolving to a dim view of their bedroom, until finally when he blinks he has the full bright of the light overhead to illuminate Celty for his myopia-blurred vision.

Celty’s kneeling on the bed next to him, her legs folded under her as she turns her shoulders towards clear attention on Shinra. She hasn’t drawn the cover of her shadows back around her, and in the first moment Shinra is grateful for his newly restored sight for the ability it gives him to appreciate Celty’s form in all her elegant beauty. Celty leans in over her hands as Shinra looks up to her, lifting a hand in the familiar motion to summon her phone before realizing that she doesn’t have any sleeves to hold it and shifting in some consternation towards the edge of the bed.

Shinra stops her by reaching out to catch at her wrist. “It’s fine,” he says, and smiles as Celty looks back at him. “I don’t need it.” He tugs gently at Celty’s wrist to urge her in, and after a moment she submits to rock forward to lie at the bed next to him. Shinra turns in towards her, reaching out to fit his arm underneath her neck and the spill of smoke drifting from it as he lets her wrist go to weight his hand against her hip instead.

“I loved it,” he says, reply to the question unasked except by the tension in Celty’s shoulders and the density of the fog rising from her neck. “I’d love anything with you, I think. But I especially loved that.” Shinra slides his hand around Celty’s waist to press to her back and pull them a little closer while he turns the full of his attention on the shadows flickering over the bed next to him. “Did you?”

There’s a puff of smoke like a startled exhale; the shape of it curves towards the outline of a heart before it rises and dissipates into the air, and Shinra laughs out loud.

“I’m glad,” he says, and drapes his arm around Celty’s waist to draw her in against his body. When he heaves a sigh it’s warm with affection that he is more than happy to share. “I love you too, Celty.”

Celty doesn’t answer aloud, of course. But the bright of the light overhead dims for a moment, hazed out of illumination by the fog of smoke filling the room, and when it brightens again it’s as a shadow wafts through the air to fall against them. The darkness takes the form of a blanket, wrapping close around Shinra before tucking itself up and around Celty’s waist as well, and Shinra smiles and shuts his eyes to wrap himself the more closely in the shadows he loves.


End file.
